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The U.S. Government announces it intends to invest more than $1 billion in resources to expand the Global Health Security Agenda to prevent, detect, and respond to future infectious disease outbreaks overseas.

THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS OFFICE July 28, 2015

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa continues to galvanize global attention and resources as the international community strives to eliminate active cases and help the affected countries recover. African leaders and African Union officials have shown extraordinary leadership in addressing the outbreak. The epidemic highlighted the urgent need to establish global capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to biological threats – to prevent future outbreaks from becoming epidemics.

Beginning with the release of the National Strategy for Countering Biological Threats in 2009, and outlined in his 2011 speech at the United Nations General Assembly, President Obama has called upon all countries to come together to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease threats, whether naturally occurring, accidental or deliberately spread. Today, the President underscored the unwavering U.S. commitment to partnering with Africans, their governments, and all who will join the effort to improve health security across the continent and for all people.

To the Editor: By December 31, 2014, the Ebola epidemic in West Africa had resulted in treatment of 10 Ebola case-patients in the United States; a maximum of 4 patients received treatment at any one time (1). Four of these 10 persons became clinically ill in the United States (2 infected outside the United States and 2 infected in the United States), and 6 were clinically ill persons medically evacuated from West Africa (Technical Appendix 1[PDF - 228 KB - 8 pages] Table 6).

Hawaii law sets target of 100pc renewables by 2045

Washington, 9 June (Argus) — Hawaii's governor David Ige (D) signed legislation making the island state the first in the US to set a mandate for all electricity to come from renewable resources.

The governor signed HB 623, which requires electric utilities to supply 100pc of their sales with renewables by 2045. The new renewable portfolio standard includes interim targets of 30pc by 2020, 40pc by 2030 and 70pc by 2040. HB 623 replaces a previous standard that called for 15pc by 2015, 25pc by 2020 and 40pc by 3030. The bill takes effect on 1 July.

Ige said the move to local sources of energy will help the state's economy, which relies on about $5bn/yr in oil imports. Fuel oil provides about 70pc of the state's electricity, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Image: The next full-margin rupture of the Cascadia subduction zone will spell the worst natural disaster in the history of the continent. Credit Illustration by Christoph Niemann; Map by Ziggymaj / Getty

newyorker.com - July 20th, 2015 - Kathryn Schulz

When the 2011 earthquake and tsunami struck Tohoku, Japan, Chris Goldfinger was two hundred miles away, in the city of Kashiwa, at an international meeting on seismology. As the shaking started, everyone in the room began to laugh. Earthquakes are common in Japan—that one was the third of the week—and the participants were, after all, at a seismology conference.

The Liberia-U.S. clinical research partnership known as PREVAIL has launched a study of people in Liberia who have survived Ebola virus disease (EVD) within the past two years. The study investigators hope to better understand the long-term health consequences of EVD, determine if survivors develop immunity that will protect them from future Ebola infection, and assess whether previously EVD-infected individuals can transmit infection to close contacts and sexual partners. The study, sponsored by the Ministry of Health of Liberia and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, will take place at various sites in Liberia and is expected to enroll approximately 7,500 people, including 1,500 people of any age who survived EVD and 6,000 of their close contacts.

EPA report cites benefits of reducing emissions, including at power plants, and of limiting climate change. This coal-fired plant is Merrimack Station in Bow, N.H. (Jim Cole / Associated Press)

Reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change could prevent tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of billions in economic losses in the United States, according to a new study by the Environmental Protection Agency.

WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 07: Vivek Murthy, U.S. surgeon general, speaks while participating in a roundtable discussion on the impacts of climate change on public health at Howard University with U.S. President Barack Obama, not pictured, in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, April 7, 2015. President Obama is warning that climate change will start affecting Americans health in the near future and he's recruiting top technology companies to help prepare the nation’s health systems. (Photo | Pool via Getty Images)

Escalators to the South Ferry Whitehall St. subway station in the financial district of Manhattan are shown flooded in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. A new study finds that without human-caused global warming, the New York subways might not have been flooded. Photograph: HANDOUT/Reuters

The paper finds that global warming is putting extreme weather on steroids

One of the hottest areas of climate research these days is on the potential connections between human emissions, global warming, and extreme weather. Will global warming make extreme weather more common or less common? More severe or less severe?

New research, just published today in Nature Climate Change helps to answer that question by approaching the problem in a novel way.

1. Energy poverty is an endemic and crippling problem; nearly 600 million people in Africa live without access to any power, which also means no access to safer and healthier electric cooking and heating, powered health centers and refrigerated medicines, light to study at night, or electricity to run a business. Here’s the situation in the 6 countries chosen to be part of President Obama’s Power Africa Initiative, home to nearly 1/3 of the continent’s population: